FLORENCE, Ky. — A Northern Kentucky charitable pharmacy reports they have serviced 30 percent more patients during the pandemic than last year.

“Our numbers are rising, the need is rising,” said Aaron Broomall, Executive Director of Faith Community Pharmacy in Florence. 

Broomall and his team are filling prescription orders and most recently, they’ve shifted their practices to ensure safety. 

“Switching to a mail-model has definitely increased our cost and you know it all depends on what the person’s getting,” Broomall said.

He said mailing prescriptions ranges from as low as $5 to $7 to high as $30 if it needs to be temperature controlled.

“By the end of September, we will have given away as much medication as we gave away in all of 2019,” Broomall said about the increase in demand.

The pharmacy helps anyone with a total household income at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level regardless of their insurance status, so for a household of one, their income is $25,000 or less.

Last month August, the non-profit received a grant from Horizon Community Funds.

“Medications that we were able to get for free and now we’re not able to find on the marketplace for free because of reduction of supplies, because of increase in need from other places and so we had clients in that were going to be in great danger of not getting medication,” Broomall said.

Faith Community Pharmacy is among the many organizations accepting grant money from Horizon Community Fund’s Coronavirus Relief Aid.

It distributed $30,000 to the pharmacy to purchase diabetes, heart disease, and asthma medications.

So far, Horizon Community Funds has distributed almost $500,000 in the region.